The Definition of Insanity
by Amora Rains
Summary: When what you're doing with your life stops making sense, where do you turn for answers? Emily's lost sight of what's important and it leads her down a dark path.
1. Endless

**A/N**

**Okay, this is the first CM story I've ever posted. Give it a chance, I hope you guys like it.**

**-Amora**

* * *

_'In the beginning it was exciting. Hard, but you always felt like you were walking away with something. Further along, the excitement starts to leave you to be replaced by a sense of duty. You knew you were helping people. Now...No matter how many people you save there are always two more to die in their place. _

_It doesn't make sense anymore. So why do we do it? We take one killer down and move on to another, losing more of ourselves each time. And with what result?_

_How long could we keep doing this?'_

~-~-~-~

**"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"**

**-Albert Einstein**

Emily Prentiss lay in bed staring at her ceiling. The early morning light filtering in through her curtains sent strips of grey light across the plain white. Even though it was still early, it was abnormally dark. Which meant one thing; rain. Emily's alarm clock had gone off fifteen minutes ago, but she couldn't muster the motivation to reach out and turn it off.

She knew she had to get up. Her job wasn't exactly one where she could call in sick whenever she didn't feel like going in. The only thing that would get her out of work today would be something life-threatening. And at the moment, that didn't sound like such a bad thing. If only a freak plane accident would send a jet engine through her bedroom ceiling and onto her bed. But no such luck. Her ceiling remained intact.

With a sigh she sat up and slammed her hand down on the clock, ending its incessant screeching. She stood, but before she could take one step toward her bathroom, her cell phone began to vibrate on her night stand. Resisting the urge to pick up her glock from beside it and shoot the damn thing into a thousand little pieces, she looked down to see who was calling.

Mother. That was exactly what she didn't need right now. Her mother could wait.

Emily ignored the phone as the vibrating ended and then picked up again a moment later, obviously her mother's attempt to annoy her into answering. She simply slammed the bathroom door on the noise. Her morning routine had become so ingrained in her that she needn't pay attention to what she was doing and could let her mind wander freely. To things far away from this life. Happier things. But when her mind wandered to beaches and palm trees, she was reminded of Florida where young girls had been tortured and raped, then videos of it were sent to the victim's mothers.

When she thought of suburban streets where children played, she thought of perverted men watching young boys and girls from gaps in their curtains, computers filled with kiddie porn.

When she thought of the lights of New York at night, she saw innocent people being forced into dark alleys at gunpoint, being beaten, having their hard-earned money stolen just so some junkie could get his next fix.

Emily opened her eyes and stared at the tiled wall of her shower. The water had turned cold. She reached to turn it off, once again wondering why she stayed at this job. And once again her annoying little voice reminded her that even if she left, she couldn't stop seeing the darkness of humanity wherever she went. So why not try to stop some of it?

But then she wondered if putting away a few sadistic perverts was really worth her sanity.

As she exited her bathroom wrapped in a towel it was to find that her phone was still going off on her nightstand. She glared at it for a second before going to pick it up. But it wasn't her mother. It was JJ.

"Yeah JJ?" she answered, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder as she pulled open her dresser to find clothes.

"We need you here as soon as possible, we've got a bad one," JJ said, sounding overworked as always.

"I'll be there shortly," Emily said. They hung up without any pleasantries.

Emily finished getting ready and rushed from her apartment without time for even a cup of coffee. She would just have to settle for the crappy coffee at the office.

~-~-~-~

"Good morning, Emily," Reid greeted her at the coffee machine.

"If you say so," she grumbled, pouring herself a cup.

"Someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" Morgan grinned, leaning against the counter beside her.

"I didn't sleep well," Emily said. That was an understatement. She barely slept anymore.

"Guys, wheels up in fifteen," JJ said, walking up to them. "We're debriefing on the jet."

"Must be really bad," Morgan sighed.

The trio grudgingly went to their desks to prepare to leave. Emily drug her GoBag out from underneath her desk and made a quick check that everything she needed was inside. She then straightened out her desk, eyeing the large pile of paperwork that had been growing taller and taller over the past few days. She would have to get to it when they returned from the case.

She looked around the office, watching her fellow agents go about their work. A group of people caught her attention. One of the agents showing kids from the academy around the office. They all had a look that she remembered well; excitement, eagerness, awe. If only they knew. No one ever taught them how much the job started to suck. How much it took from you until you were someone you hardly recognized.

"Prentiss," Morgan said, waving a hand in front of her face. She snapped out of her thoughts to look up at him. "We're leaving. You ready?"

"Yeah," she nodded and slung her bag over her shoulder, following the team out of the office.

~-~-~-~

"JJ?" Hotch asked once they were settled on the jet. The blonde nodded and began handing out the case files.

"Over the past month four families have been murdered in their homes late at night in Charleston, South Carolina," she started. "All the families consist of a mother, a father, a son, and a daughter. The father is beaten to death by a blunt object. The son is strangled with some form of wire. And...the little girl is raped and then stabbed. The entire time he does this, the UnSub forces the mother to watch. Once done, he shoots her execution style."

"Obviously an attack on the mother," Emily said, fighting back the urge to vomit as she looked at the crime scene photos. "Indicating that the UnSub has issues with his own mother. He most likely had the same family structure as his victims."

"He's obviously organized," Reid said, tilting his head to the side as he examined one of the pictures. "He brings his own tools and makes sure not to leave anything behind. No forensic evidence?"

JJ shook her head. "There were traces of spermicide recovered from each of the girls," she said, a slight scowl forming on her lips.

"We need to hit the ground running on this one," Hotch said. "JJ, you and I will go to the station. Morgan and Prentiss, I want you to go to the latest crime scene and see what you can find. Rossi and Reid, head over to the morgue and see what they have."

The team nodded their compliance and buckled their seatbelts as they prepared to land.

* * *

**A/N**

**Hope you enjoyed it, I'm going to try and make the next chapters longer. This one was just to start off the story, the next ones will definitely be more eventful as well.**


	2. Breaking

**A/N**

**Thanks for all the support everyone, I couldn't believe people already read my first chapter after it had only been posted for a few hours. Hope you stay with me and enjoy this chapter.**

**(By the way, I do watch Bones. It's my favorite show next to CM. New episode tomorrow night!)**

**-Amora**

* * *

_'When you do this job, you begin it thinking you're fighting for life. Saving people. But along the way, you realize that all you're doing is causing more death. Whether it was a mistake in the field causing a civilian their life or actually catching the bad guy and putting him away, you're sentencing him to death. And in some cases, the job can cost you your life or the lives of your loved ones.'_

**_"While I thought that I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die"_**

**_Leonardo da Vinci_**

To the untrained eye, the suburban neighborhood looked perfectly normal. Adults gossiped, children played. But as Morgan and Emily neared the home of the latest victims, things started to change. Less and less people were out. The adults looked nervous, watching for anything out of the ordinary, keeping a close eye on their families.

The children played with less enthusiasm. None of them were seen in less than groups of four, something that either their parents had enforced or they had started to do on their own out of instinct.

There was safety in numbers.

Something that Emily knew to be completely untrue having dealt with criminal who could care less how many people were around. But why not let the find comfort in their false sense of security?

"Everything all right, Prentiss?" Morgan asked, who had been trying to talk to her for the past minute with no response.

"Fine," she said, looking forward.

"You know you can't lie to a profiler, Emily," Morgan said.

"Isn't that the place?" she asked, pointing to a house that had been taped off and was swarming with police.

Morgan frowned but let the subject drop for the moment since they had work to do and she obviously didn't want to talk. He pulled up to the curb a few feet in front of the police line. Emily jumped out of the car and strode over to the yellow tape barricade.

"FBI?" one of the officers asked and she nodded as Morgan came up behind her.

"Agents Prentiss and Morgan," Emily said, ducking under the tape that the officer held up for them.

"Officer Helms," he said, shaking their hands. "I'm warning you now, it's not a pretty sight in there."

Emily left the two men behind and walked into the house. Dried blood coated everything. The crime scene photos still fresh in her memory, Emily could make out the exact spots where the bodies had been. The most blood was splattered against the wall behind the chair that the mother had been tied to. Among the blood was bits of brain and skull fragments. Emily turned from that sight to across the living room, where the chair was facing, obviously the stage where the woman had watched her family being murdered. They had been lined up in front of her. The father on the left, the first to be murdered. Where he had been beaten the area was covered in blood. Next the boy, who had mercifully been strangled before having to see what was done to his sister. Then the girl. A dark stain of blood where she had bled out after being stabbed.

That spot affected her the most. The rest of the killings were horrible, yes, but the girl had only been seven. Emily wanted to scream. She found herself thinking of what it had been like from the mother's point of view. Husband and son dead before your eyes, your little girl being raped and there was nothing you could do to keep it from happening. You were forced to listen to her cries, begging for it to stop. And then the end did come, in the form of a silver blade.

After all that, the mothers were probably thankful that he shot them. Because who would want to live after that?

As she stood lost in her dark thoughts, she wondered what was happening to her. Where had her precious compartmentalization skills gone? She shouldn't be thinking these things, not here, not in the field when there was work to be done, a sick killer to be found and brought to justice. But she couldn't stop it. Everything horrible surrounding her was crashing down in one dark wave of misery and despair and she hadn't the will to fight it.

She had become an FBI agent to preserve life, to fight for those who couldn't fight for themselves, to bring justice to victims and their loved ones. But she was beginning to forget that, becoming consumed by the pain that she faced on a day to day basis. She couldn't make sense of this anymore.

In all these years, she thought she had been doing something important. But now it all seemed pointless. They might catch this guy, and the next, but after that there would still be more. More twisted souls who called themselves human. And who was to say that the victims of these killers were innocent anyway? Did they even deserve justice? She knew what humanity was capable of, and that didn't stop at those who acted on their perverted desires. Just because you didn't act on dark thoughts didn't mean you were innocent.

Emily felt like she was running circles around herself and she just couldn't understand the point anymore. She didn't want to do this. She felt like she was losing her mind.

So she turned and walked from the house, across the yard, ducked under the yellow police tape, and began down the street. She didn't know where she was going and to be honest she didn't much care, but one thing she did know was that she couldn't be here right now.

The first time her cell phone rang it was Morgan, about ten minutes after she had left the house. She ignored it. Then JJ. Reid. Morgan again. Rossi. Garcia. By now Garcia probably had a trace on her cell and someone was coming to find her, most likely Morgan. She wondered if he would yell at her. No. Morgan didn't yell. At least, not outside the interrogation room. He would probably just demand to know what the hell she thought she was doing.

It was getting darker. The storm she had woken up to in D.C. appeared to have followed her. Black clouds were rolling in from the north, accompanied by crashing thunder and streaks of lightning.

Her phone rang again as a drop of rain hit her cheek. She lifted it and read the caller ID. Hotch. Another drop hit the screen. The call ended. A car pulled up beside her. Emily lowered the phone and looked up at the darkening sky, waiting for the storm to break.

* * *

**A/N**

**Okay, wasn't that long, but I've been working on it since last night, so I think it should make up for how short it is. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, don't feel shy about sharing them.**

**Amora**


	3. Hollow

**A/N**

**Thanks for all the support everyone! Sorry once again for the first two chapters being so short, but since I'm going to try and make them longer now, it's going to take longer to get them out. Enjoy!**

**-Amora**

* * *

'_You dedicate your life to this job, sacrificing so much in the process. Family, relationships, even the luxury of sleeping in late. It consumes everything, like a wildfire that can't be stopped. And when it's too late, you realize you have nothing left.'_

_**"It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction"**_

**_Pablo Picasso_**

Emily set her empty glass back on the counter, cringing at the burn. After finding her wandering the streets in the rain, Rossi had taken her out for a drink. He had seen a change in her over the past few months and that crime scene had been her breaking point. He'd been where she was before and he was going to help her through it. And copious amounts of hard liqour was definitely a good start.

"We should probably get back," she said, though she made no move to leave.

"They'll be okay without us for awhile," Rossi assured her and waved the bartender over for two more drinks.

She nodded and accepted the scotch set before her.

"Is Hotch mad?" she asked after a few minutes.

"Worried," Rossi answered. "It's never good when one of your agents walks out of a crime scene."

He waited for her to say something, but she remained silent. He should have known a few drinks wouldn't get her to talk. She was just going to try and bury it like everything else, her pride refusing to let her ask for help.

"Emily," he started. "This is something you can't compartmentalize."

She glanced up at him for a moment, then looked back down at her glass, tracing her finger around the rim.

"I don't understand it anymore," she confessed.

Rossi sighed and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the worn bar top.

"Sometimes it's hard to remember why we do it," he said. "There's not a morning I wake up and don't wonder why I gave everything up for this job. But it haunts you. I left the job, but the job never left me. Trust me, Emily, you can go to the ends of the earth and you won't be able to escape what you've seen."

"Is this supposed to be cheering me up?" she asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow at him.

"No," Rossi shook his head. "I'm just trying to help you understand that you can walk out of a crime scene but that doesn't make it any less real, any less horrific. And you're always going to remember it. But let me ask you something, Prentiss. If you left the job, what would you have left?"

"What's your point, Rossi?" she asked angrily. She didn't need reminding that her job was all she had in life.

Rossi stood and placed a hand on her shoulder. "That even though we face the darkest of humanity every day, we're still surrounded by people that understand and that will always be there when you need them." He squeezed her shoulder. "I'll be in the car."

Emily stared down at what was left of her drink, then frowned and pushed it away. She stood and followed Rossi out of the bar.

* * *

Hotch looked up from his file and Rossi and Emily entered the station. An initial wave of relief washed over him when he saw her, but that was replaced with worry when he took in her expression and realized she was anything but all right. And he couldn't have a compromised agent risking mistake on such an urgent case. He closed the file he held and set it down.

"Prentiss," was all he said. She looked at him and nodded, following him into a vacated office and turning to him as he snapped the door shut. "I need to know what's going on with you," he said, always straight to the point.

"The crime scene just got to me today," she hedged.

"That's no excuse for leaving a teammate alone in the field," Hotch said. "You know what happens when someone makes a mistake. If you can't handle this, I can't have you here risking the investigation."

"I can do it," she assured him with a short nod.

He studied her, trying to determine if she was being honest.

"Your role in the field is going to be limited," he said, by way of telling her that he wasn't taking her off the case.

She nodded her understanding and the pair left the office.

"Hey," JJ said, walking over to them with her phone in her hand. "We have something. A woman reports having seen a suspicious vehicle hanging around the neighborhood of the latest victims for about a week before the murders."

"Where is she?" Hotch asked.

"On her way here," JJ told him, her gaze sliding over to Emily. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she reassured her friend. She was going to have to get used to saying that after what her little break-down. Her team was going to worry and watch her closely for awhile. Her cell vibrated on her hip, giving her an excuse to walk away from Hotch and JJ. It was her mother again. She had called six times by now and Emily supposed she may as well answer and get it over with.

"Hello Mother," she greeted, going outside for privacy. "I can't talk long, I'm on a case."

"You had an abortion," Elizabeth accused right away and Emily's entire body went numb with the kind of irrational fear you got as a teenager when you've done something wrong that you don't want your parents to find out about.

Instead of denying it, she chose another option. "This really isn't the best time-"

"Emily Prentiss, I do not-"

Emily snapped the phone shut. She was not going to stand there and let her mother bitch her out over something that had happened over twenty years ago. She could just get over it or stay mad, Emily really didn't care.

"Everything all right?" someone asked and Emily turned to see Hotch standing in front of the station door, his intense gaze fixed on her. She hated when he turned that look on her.

"Just my mother," she said, pocketing her phone.

"Prentiss," Hotch stopped her on her way back into the building. "If you need a few days..."

"I'm fine, Hotch," she repeated. She stopped, her hand on the door handle. "Thanks though," she said and entered the building.

* * *

She knew he was watching her. Either to make sure she was focusing on the case or just because he was worried about her, she didn't know. But it was getting on her nerves. Then again Hotch wasn't the only watching her. The whole team was keeping an eye one her. She felt like she was on suicide watch and being around a team of profilers that would notice the slightest change in her behavior and then jump on it was making her a little nervous.

She tried to ignore them and focus on the preliminary profile with Reid. She had offered to talk to their witness, but Hotch had told her JJ and Rossi were doing it. Then she'd offered to go with Morgan to the victim's street to get a feel of how the UnSub had watched the family, but Hotch had smoothly told her that it would be better if she helped Reid, which was ridiculous. Reid never needed help. He simply buzzed around her spewing off random statistics or facts, mostly to himself.

"Reid."

"-and you know the different styles of killing he has for each victim is extremely interesting, you hardly ever see a serial killer use so many different killing styles-"

"Reid."

"-it could have something to do with the specific victim. What's really interesting is the girls, stabbing is usually a sign of impudence, but he rapes her as well. I wonder-"

"REID!"

He looked at her with an oblivious expression.

"Do you really need me here?" she asked, slightly exasperated. "You don't really seem to need my help."

"Well, I guess not but-"

"Great!" she interrupted him, quickly standing and leaving before he could keep talking.

She found herself in front of the board they were using to map out the details of the case. How many times had she been in this position, looking at horrific crime scene photos in an attempt to bring these people justice? In the past she had been able to see these things without letting them get to her. She had always been very at not bringing the cases home with her, but now they had begun to haunt her. She couldn't look at a normal object without seeing the gruesome things that could be done with, couldn't look at people and not see them either dead or hurting someone else. Nothing had innocence anymore.

The darkness she had seen, experienced was constantly lurking at the back of her mind stealing away her peace, rubbing at her like sandpaper until she was left raw, bleeding, and vulnerable. And she couldn't see an end. She felt like she was trapped, doomed to stay and try in vain to find some sense of purpose or run away and hide, wallowing in her pain.

She had nothing.

In her past was only pain. The present was pure misery. In her future all she could see was a never-ending hollow existence. She had nothing to hold on to, no one to keep her grounded. And for not the first time in her life Emily Prentiss contemplated suicide.

* * *

**A/N**

**I am so sorry this took so damn long to update, I was so impossibly stuck. I tried listening to music, reading poems, drawing, I even went on Youtube and looked up Hotch/Prentiss videos for inspiration and just could not push past my damn writer's block. I know it's still kinda short, but it's at least longer than the last two and I didn't want to keep you guys waiting any longer. Thanks for sticking with me.**

**Amora**


	4. Beginning

**A/N**

**Okay, I don't even know if anyone who was reading this is still with me anymore. I don't even know how long it's been. But I just completely lost inspiration for this story, not to mention I was busy with school and crap. But now I'm back and I'm gonna give this another go. Hope you like it enough to stay. ;P**

**-Amora**

**P.S. Who else is pissed about JJ?**

* * *

_'There is nothing on this job that you don't see, nothing that won't affect you, that won't make you question everything you thought you knew. You try not to let it get to you, but in the end you realize you had no real protection against it.'_

**_"There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession."_**

**_Daniel Webster_**

"Some thing's wrong," Hotch said to Rossi as he watched Emily pour herself a cup of coffee. Rossi looked up and followed his gaze.

"She'll be fine," he said casually, returning his gaze to the files before him. He felt Hotch's raptor gaze turned on him and ignored it. The man should know better than to think that that look could have any affect on him.

Hotch removed his gaze from Rossi, returning it to Emily. She seemed okay. But it was easy to seem okay. Actually being okay was an entirely different matter. And he knew she wasn't okay. He could see it in her eyes, see the absolute emptiness in them. She wasn't the same person anymore. She used to be optimistic, determined. Now it seemed as if everything had finally gotten to her and she had just given up.

He knew if he didn't do something to help her soon, it was going to be too late.

* * *

2:37 A.M.

2:38 A.M.

2:39 A.M.

2:40 A.M.

Emily sighed and rolled over, tired of watching every minute that she couldn't sleep tick by. She was met with the sight of her gun resting on the other night stand. Every time lightning struck, the light would break through a gap in the curtains and glance off the weapon. If she timed it so it fired the same time as a clap of thunder, no one would hear it. They wouldn't know until the morning, when she never came out of her room.

She watched her hand reach out and her fingers close around the cool metal of the glock. There was a knock at her door and she released the gun as if it had burned her. In a momentary panic she though that maybe one of her team members had known what she was about to do.

Whoever was there knocked again. She kicked her blanket off and threw her legs over the side of the bed. She stood up too quickly and was hit with a bout of vertigo. Her vision went dark for a moment and she had to catch herself on the wall to keep her legs from giving out. Seconds later it passed and she was able to keep herself upright to answer the door. She put her eye to the peephole to find a distorted-looking Hotch standing on the other side of her door. What he wanted with her at almost three in the morning, she couldn't imagine. She would have thought it was case-related if she hadn't seen he was in a t-shirt and flannel pajama pants.

Thoroughly confused, she opened the door.

"What are you doing, Hotch?" she asked, a little bit flustered. She had never seen him in anything other than crisp suits and several times a hospital gown.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

She was too interested in what was going on to refuse, so she stepped aside and let him enter the dark room. He turned on her bedside lamp as she closed and locked the door. He turned and looked at her without saying anything, completely putting her at a loss of what was going on. She didn't like it when he looked at her like that. It made her feel like he could see right through her. She began to feel nervous.

"Is there something you need?" she asked, glancing at her gun. She felt guilty, like he would see it and know what she wanted to do with it.

"I'm worried about you," he said.

"And you felt the need to tell me this at three in the morning?" she asked incredulously.

"I couldn't sleep," he told her. "And I didn't think you were able to sleep either."

It gave her the creeps that he would know that.

"Am I right?" he asked.

She shrugged, not willing to admit he was.

"I need to know that you're not going to do anything...reckless," he said, his gaze becoming more intense, which she hadn't thought was possible.

"I don't know what you mean," she lied.

"Don't lie to me, Emily," he said. Her stomach always squirmed when he used her first name.

"I'm not," she lied again. She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm and turned her to face him once more.

He didn't say anything, he just stared at her. Everything around her dissolved as they simply looked at one another. She didn't see him come closer, but suddenly she felt his hand pressed against her back, pushing her closer to him, and his lips were on hers. She stopped breathing.

Just as quickly as he was pressed up against her, he had moved away.

"Just don't only think about yourself," he said and left her room.

She could only stare after him.

* * *

"Emily. Are you listening to me?" Garcia's concerned voice asked over the phone.

"What? Yeah, of course," Emily said, watching Hotch talk to the sheriff.

"No you're not."

"What?"

"So, sex with you last night was really great, Em, how about we do it again some time?" Garcia asked.

"Yeah, sure," Emily said.

"Emily, what did I just say?" Garcia demanded.

"What?"

Garcia made a noise of annoyance. Emily definitely wasn't hearing a word she said.

"I'm going to call Morgan," she said and hung up.

Emily still held the phone to her ear. Hotch glanced up from the paper the sheriff was showing him to look at her. She quickly spun her chair around and finally realized she wasn't on the phone with Garcia anymore. She hung up and got to her feet. She needed some air and better coffee than the station provided. She thought she remembered seeing a coffee shop around the corner.

* * *

**UnSub's POV**

He liked hanging around the coffee shop because it was close to the police station and many of the officer's frequented it. Lately they stupidly discussed their current case while they bought coffee and pastries. He looked up as the door opened and a woman entered. She was the same one he had seen at the last house, the one who had left. She one of the FBI agents. Seeing her up close ignited a familiar feeling.

Rage, passion, lust.

He knew. He had to have her. Like the other woman. He wanted her screams. He Wanted her pain. He wanted her blood.

Had to have her.

**

* * *

**

**A/N**

**There you are, my lovelies. Not as long as the last chapter, but better than no chapter! :D**

**Love from, Amora**


	5. Author's Note

All right guys. I know this story pretty much died, but so many people want it to be continued that I'm going to do my best to get it going again. I'm working on chapter 5 right now and hopefully it will be posted soon. I don't think I would have gotten started again without you guys supporting me, so please don't stop!

Love from,

Amora


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